


Crows' Nest

by SomniumAvis



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Family Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Memes, Slice of Life, Team as Family, Zombie Apocalypse, but no one dies don't worry, grandparents ukai and takeda, reluctant parents daichi and suga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26324449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomniumAvis/pseuds/SomniumAvis
Summary: When the worlds ends, the team is stranded and left to survive on their own. But, as a team and as a family, they somehow find a way.
Relationships: Ambiguous/Implied Relationships - Relationship, Team - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Crows' Nest

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a stupid little thing I thought up and wrote. Hope you enjoy, anyway!

A crow’s nest is a fixed post or platform near the top of a mast on a ship, used as a lookout post. They had something similar, even if it wasn’t used all that often. On the top floor of what once used to be an office building that they more or less used as a living space, there was access to the roof, along with large windows in the top floor that made the top floor a good lookout post. One or two of them would keep watch there, on the roof when the weather was nice, and on the top floor when it was raining or too windy. 

Of course, the high-rise itself was practically useless in terms of utilities. Ever since the outbreak and the collapse of society, many household functions such as electricity and running water had stopped working. At least the building was still standing, and at least it provided shelter from the dangers outside. 

It wasn’t much, but it was somewhere safe for them. 

* * *

None of them had a chance to properly say goodbye to their families. 

The Karasuno High School volleyball team, plus their managers, coach, and advisor, had left school for Tokyo on a trip that September, planning to stay in Tokyo for a few days. The team stayed in an inn overnight, and that was when news of the outbreak first surfaced. 

The news reports called it a “flesh-eating disease” but didn’t give any more specifics, other than that they were trying to fence off the area of infection. No one knew about the zombies it created until pictures of them started making their way online. Coach Ukai and Takeda-sensei were called away from the inn one evening for a meeting, and everyone expected them to return a few hours later, as they said. 

Only an hour later, the curtains were opened to the sight of zombies surrounding the inn. 

The team had hid in the upper floor of the inn, until noise below them alerted them to the sound of the door hinges breaking. 

For many days to come, Hinata would never quite know how they escaped the overrun inn. But either way, all twelve members of the volleyball team and the two managers had managed to make their way out of the inn and into the darkening Tokyo streets. 

And all around them, rang the screams of both the living and the undead as the infected roamed the streets, preying on any humans that happened to stumble into their path. 

(They didn’t see Coach Ukai or Takeda-sensei.)

* * *

The next couple days were spent in a sort of haze of disbelief and panic, hiding in the empty lobbies of abandoned buildings, ducking into alleys to avoid the zombies, digging through abandoned stores for food and water or weapons. They had only brought a few things each with them when they fled the inn the night the outbreak reached them. 

Nights were the hardest on all of them. Nowhere was completely secure, and they were all on edge and nervous, with at least a few people awake at any time in the night. Nightmares were plenty, too. Many times, one of them would wake to someone muttering or crying quietly in their sleep. At least there wasn’t any screaming, so they were relatively quiet. But there would always be someone to comfort anyone with nightmares. 

The undead now swarmed most of Tokyo, it seemed. Everywhere they turned, they could see nothing but danger on all sides. After Kiyoko found a barely working radio in one of the stores they raided, they managed to listen in to some news reports, and learned that the disease and the zombies had spread all over Japan, and learned about how all of the country was desperately trying to find a cure. 

Three days later, the radio stopped working - either it broke, or the Internet was no longer working, the latter of which probably meant that the world was breaking down and they were on their own. They were probably stuck on their own in Tokyo, with no foreseeable way to get back to Miyagi and their families. 

In the panic and uncertainty that fell on them once that conclusion was reached, their captain took charge. First off, he said, they needed somewhere permanent to hide. Once they did, they would have somewhere to base their operations around. And most importantly of all, he said, they needed to work together as a team, looking out for each other, or they wouldn't survive. 

The next day, they stumbled on an abandoned office building several stories high, and decided that it was good enough. 

* * *

“So, if we used one of the floors in the middle - maybe the third or fourth floor - as our main living area, and barricaded the doors leading out of the stairway, we’d not only have a good vantage point, we’d be safe unless we were surrounded,” Daichi muttered to Suga as the two of them pried open a door on the fifth floor leading to another large room of cubicles. The team had been split into seven pairs and sent out to scout out the building and make sure there were no zombies prowling around, even though it was highly unlikely. 

“That would work. We just need to get rid of all the desks and clutter, and clear an open space,” Suga replied, hefting his crowbar over one shoulder as they headed inside. 

The two of them cleared the fifth floor fairly quickly, and once their survey was completed, they headed back downstairs to where they agreed to meet on the ground floor, and Daichi explained his plan to the rest of the team. Without any better ideas, they agreed. 

The next few days were spent carrying out that plan. Deciding that camping out on the fourth floor, the floor in the middle of the building, was the best idea, the next few days were spent clearing out the unneeded furniture (read: literally shoving desks and chairs out of the open windows, the idea courtesy of Tanaka and Noya). A couple dozen chairs and several desks and tables were kept, along with the potted plants, but everything else was either thrown out the window or brought down to the third floor (Tsukishima had gotten the idea of keeping the extra furniture and using them as projectiles against any zombie hordes that might surround the building). 

Once the floor was mostly clear, the tables were pushed against the walls or arranged around the room and futons and blankets scavenged from shops were laid down over the floor to create sleeping spaces. Raids were conducted in groups between three to six, making their way to abandoned shops, scavenging whatever supplies they could find, even if they couldn’t find immediate uses for them, and making their way back to the building with whatever they could carry. The city streets, once different and unfamiliar to them, became familiar to them, and the office building, once cold and empty, became more or less their home. 

With the fourth floor as their main living area, the floors above them were left alone or turned into spaces where they stored extra supplies, although most of their hauls from their raids were just kept on their fourth floor, lying around on tables or on empty spaces on the floor. The floors below them ended up just being empty floors where extra furniture was stored, and the door in the stairwell that led to the lobby was barricaded with bars across it holding it in place, to be removed whenever they needed to leave the building for supply runs. The top floor, which had roof access, was turned into a lookout post of sorts, which they really only ended up using for a few hours every night. Yachi ended up nicknaming the top floor/roof the “crow’s nest” because a crow’s nest was a lookout post on the mast of a shop. The nickname stuck. 

Days stuck to a sort of routine. Each morning began with breakfast, served at different times because everyone tended to wake up at different times. Raids were usually conducted in the morning or afternoon, and always when the sun was up, never in the evenings or too early in the morning when the sun hadn’t risen yet. When they weren’t out on raids, they were stuck in the building, pacing around one of the unused floors or just chatting idly with whoever might be around. There was communal lunch and dinner, and every night, someone would watch from the crow’s nest for about an hour or so before coming down to the common area to sleep. 

The fact that this was now their life: hiding out in an empty office building from the dangerous zombie hordes, scavenging for food, and with only each other, was a difficult fact to accept. But it eventually became just another fact of life as they got used to it. 

* * *

Lighting a fire in a building where the fire suppression system no longer worked was probably a terrible idea, but they didn’t have a choice. With no electricity, their main source of heat was now fire. In their main living area, they had futons pushed to the sides of the large room with a spot in the center for a campfire a distance away from the sleeping areas. Many evenings, one of them would gather piles of sticks collected from the few trees growing outside, and clumsily light it with a match. 

Dinner was spent with all of them gathered in a loose circle around the fire, eating. Food was anything safe they could find. Much of the perishable food in grocery stores had rotted, but there was still a little that was safe to eat. The perishable food was eaten first. There was also canned food, eaten straight out of the can with scavenged forks and spoons. And as night fell and the fire began to burn low, many of them sat gathered around the fire with nothing else to do (Daichi and Suga had forbidden them from going outside after the sun set due to the dangers of encountering zombie hordes in the dark). 

They didn’t have a working clock, so they could only judge the time by the light of the sky. As the sky darkened, most of the team got up to go to bed and Ennoshita headed upstairs to maintain a lookout from the crow’s nest, leaving only a few people still seated around the fire. After what felt like a few hours after the sun had completely gone down, Daichi got up from where he was seated, saying, “Alright. I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late, you three.” 

“We won’t,” Suga assured, calling after him. “What is he, a father?” he murmured to Hinata, who was sitting beside him, after Daichi was out of earshot. 

“But he does seem like a father, doesn’t he?” Yachi asked from Hinata’s other side. 

“He definitely does,” Hinata replied, smiling slightly. An idea slowly formed in his head. “Hey...what exactly do you think we are? A bunch of people on the same team...trying to live together...like a family? A very dysfunctional family...that is.”

“A dysfunctional family?” Suga asked. 

“I wouldn’t say we were dysfunctional,” Yachi said. “We support each other. We look out for each other. I don’t think that would be considered dysfunctional.” 

“Alright. If we’re not a dysfunctional family and instead a normal family, what roles do you think each of us would have?” Hinata asked. This was actually kinda fun to imagine. 

“Would we even have roles? We’re...um...how do I put this…” Yachi muttered. 

“A bunch of crazy idiots who happened to be stuck in the same situation together?” 

“Er...I wouldn’t quite say it like that…” 

“No, we can have roles,” Suga said. “And Daichi can be the father.”

“Does that make you the mother?” Hinata asked innocently. “Since he’s the captain and you’re the vice-captain?” 

The three of them spent the next hour or so quietly debating the roles of everyone on the team, as not to wake anyone that might be asleep. Ennoshita returned from the top floor, and went to bed with a quiet report on how nothing was happening outside. The fire burned lower and lower, until it was nothing but a couple dying embers providing little light, and their eyes began to adjust to the pale moonlight filtering in through the window. 

“...No, you two are definitely the parents. You two led the team throughout this whole disaster, and you kept us together,” Yachi said while Hinata nodded in agreement. 

“Ha, I don’t know about that-” Suga began. 

“All of you! BED!” Daichi yelled from across the room, startling them. 

“Okay!” Suga called, getting to his feet. Ushering Hinata and Yachi up and pushing Yachi over to the corner of the room she shared with Kiyoko, separated from the others by a couple office desks, he said, “He’s probably right. Up, you two. You need to sleep.” 

“See? You two are definitely parents.” 

* * *

“Stay where we can see you!” Suga called after them as the four of them darted out of the building’s lobby and into the street, carefully keeping an eye out for any zombies that might be making their way down the street in daylight. 

“Alright!” Hinata replied. “Mom,” he added after a short pause. 

“He does seem like the team’s mom. Nice, Shouyou,” Noya said. 

After Kageyama found a few volleyballs on one of their raids and brought them back, they had started going out in small groups to practice passing back and forth. 

A few minutes passed without much talking as they broke off into two pairs and began passing. “Hey, do you think we could set up a small barrier in the lobby, like a net, so we can practice spiking?” Hinata asked, breaking the quiet. “The ceiling would be high enough, I think.”

“We don’t have anything for a barrier, dumbass. If we did, we’d be using it for barricading the entrance,” Kageyama answered. 

“We might be able to spare some supplies. Old crates, or whatever,” Tanaka said. “You’ll have to ask Daichi and Suga about that, though.” 

“Oh, so we have to ask Mom and Dad.” 

“Pretty much.” 

* * *

“Hey, you said that your hair was getting long and you needed a haircut, but we didn’t have any proper scissors?” 

“Yeah?” 

“How about we use this?” 

“NO.” 

“Oh come on, it’s sharp. Sharp enough to cut hair, at least.” 

“We’re not using that!”

“I thought you said you wanted a haircut?” 

“You are not cutting my hair with a butcher knife!” 

* * *

“We’re back!” Yamaguchi called as the group of six made their way into the room, back from volleyball practice outside. A few other team members exchanged greetings, calling them out across the room. 

“Hello, back, I’m Daichi,” Daichi muttered absentmindedly as he bent over a map with Kiyoko. 

Complete silence hung in the air. 

“Yes, Father,” Tsukishima deadpanned. 

Delighted cackling could be heard throughout the entire floor. 

* * *

With most of the nearby stores emptied by their raids, they were going to run out of food, and had to find a more sustainable food source. A few ideas on growing their own food in a garden on the roof or top floor of their building, as well as an idea of collecting rainwater for a somewhat more sustainable source of water, were thrown around. Eventually, they settled on the idea of creating small gardens on their top floor and/or roof, and a team of six set out to raid shops for soil, seeds, and gardening tools on their first raid where they stayed out of the building overnight. 

Finding a shop that held all of those things was difficult enough, and hauling the supplies back was an effort. When they got home, the rest of the team helped to drag the supplies all the way up to the roof, and helped organize growbeds that were literally just many plant pots arranged in rows. 

Organizing the growbeds was an experience in itself. The task of the actual construction of the growbeds were taken by the other eight team members that hadn’t gone on the raid for supplies. Ennoshita ended up supervising the job, as their captain was busy organizing and managing supplies and their vice-captain was resting after having returned from the raid. Kinoshita and Narita ended up doing half the work all by themselves after a dirt-fight had somehow broken out and needed to be cleaned up. By evening, however, the pots were neatly lined up and the remains of the dirt-fight had been cleaned up as well as possible. 

They couldn’t plant the seeds themselves, however. It was autumn, not the best time to begin planting. Well, they would at least have plant pots to keep them company when watching from the crow’s nest. 

* * *

“I still can’t believe this. I still can’t believe that we let them put up a makeshift net made out of old crates in the lobby and let them practice spiking there.” Daichi sighed in exhaustion, and leaned closer to Suga from where they were sitting on the same step in the dark stairwell. 

“Let them have this. They’ve been through a lot, and they deserve to have some fun,” Suga said, and rested his head on Daichi’s shoulder, moving closer until they were pressed side-to-side. Daichi could barely see him in the unlit stairwell, a dark shape within a hanging ambient haze of darkness, but he could feel his weight pressed against him and his warmth seeping into his side through his layered clothing. 

Without really thinking about his actions, Daichi wound his arm around Suga’s shoulders, turned his head and buried the lower half of his face in Suga’s hair, and inhaled deeply. He smelled as if warmth could become a scent. They then sat there in silence, with sounds of volleyballs being spiked into the ground echoing up from the floor just below them, and didn’t move for a while, with Suga’s head wedged halfway under Daichi’s chin and Daichi wrapped partially around Suga’s back, sharing body heat. 

They didn’t notice the inquisitive eyes peering down at them from a few landings above. 

* * *

For weeks to come, Tsukishima would never quite figure out how exactly he ended up on the fifth floor of their building in what seemed like the middle of the night, with everyone living in the building save for Daichi and Suga gathered in a ring around Tanaka, Noya, and a large piece of paper with the words: “OPERATION: CROW PARENTS” written on it in bright red marker held between them. 

“Behold!” Tanaka whisper-shouted. He and Noya then proceeded to explain the unnecessarily complicated plan they laid out, in a dark room with the only illumination being a stark light from a single flashlight. 

“Is all this really necessary?” Asahi asked quietly and somewhat nervously. “I’m sure it’s possible they could work it out themselves.” 

“Of course it’s possible,” Noya said, patting Asahi’s shoulder. “But where’s the fun in that?” 

The plan ended up going wrong in every single way possible in the span of the next two days, which was the time frame detailed in the plan. After several incidents on the second day, including Tsukishima and Yamaguchi hiding in an empty broom closet together to get away from everyone else’s insanity, Hinata getting tangled in a large pile of yarn they scavenged from a shop, and Suga ultimately catching onto what they were doing, their plan was announced a failure. But at least the end result was the same. 

* * *

“Please just let me die already. This sucks.” 

“You can’t die, Daichi, we have ten kids. Twelve if you count Shimizu and Yachi, and you honestly might as well, right?” 

“I want a divorce.” 

* * *

About two months had passed since the world ended, and they had done well so far. But there were other coming issues they would soon have to deal with. 

They waited until everyone else was asleep to discuss this. There was no need for any of the others to overhear what their leaders - or their parents, as they were called - were so worried about. 

Once Suga could hear nothing else but the steady breathing in the room, he slipped out from under his blankets and got up, pulling a jacket on, shivering slightly in the chilly air. In the near complete darkness, he could spot Daichi doing the same thing a few feet away. 

“The fifth floor?” Daichi asked in a whisper as he picked up a folded map. 

“Sure.” Suga fumbled around for a few seconds, searching for the flashlight he left near his futon. His fingers then met plastic, wrapping around the flashlight handle, cold in the cool night air. Getting up, he and Daichi slowly made their way across the room to the stairwell. 

Daichi opened the door and Suga turned on the flashlight, letting it illuminate the stairwell. After Daichi closed the door behind him, they paused for a few moments to listen for any sounds from the bottom of the stairwell. When he shone his light down the stairwell and they couldn’t see anything out of place, meaning that their barricades had held up and no zombies had gotten in, so they turned to head up the stairs. 

The fifth floor was ghostly in its emptiness and darkness, lit only by the little moonlight making its way through the window and the beam of the flashlight. The sight of empty desks organized around the room greeted them as they walked, still arranged as if waiting for the office workers to come back any day and continue working. They moved to sit down at a desk, and Daichi spread out the map over the desk, and Suga rested the flashlight next to the map to provide light. 

“So you wanted to talk about trying to get back to Miyagi?” Suga asked, getting straight to the point. 

“Yeah. Miyagi is probably safer for us than Tokyo.” Daichi leaned over the map, letting his elbows rest on the table. “Winter’s coming soon, and I don’t know if we’ll have enough food to last us through the season. We’ve emptied out almost all the shops in the general area around us. At least in Miyagi, there’ll be some crops to scavenge. We’ll also have a somewhat more sustainable source of water from the streams there.” He was avoiding what they both really wanted to say, Suga could tell. 

“It’ll probably be safer, anyway. Less people means less zombies,” Suga murmured. 

Daichi nodded. “We can plan a route, but there’s the question of how to get there. We definitely can’t walk. I don’t think anyone here can drive, and that’s if we can find a working car large enough for everyone, including all the supplies we have with us, because we might need them when we get back to Miyagi,” he said. 

“But there’s also what everyone here thinks,” Suga said. “To them, this...is home. Maybe not a good one, compared to what they each had before the world ended, but it’s a home, anyway.” 

“I know. But we could also find another home in Miyagi...and maybe...we could find our families, even with such a small chance of doing so.” 

Daichi bowed his head. Feeling like something was stuck in his throat, Suga reached over and rested his hand on one of Daichi’s. When he looked up, Suga tried a smile and said, “Hey. I know it’s hard for all of us. But remember, they need us now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the stairwell. 

A small laugh makes its way out of Daichi’s mouth, somewhat shakier than Suga would like. “The crow parents, huh?” 

“Of course.” He pushes the map forward. “Now, can we get back to the task at hand?” 

They spent the next half hour or so quietly discussing options of getting back to Miyagi, and the pros and cons of doing so. When it felt like all possible topics had been discussed and turned over, Daichi suggested that they go back to sleep. 

Holding up one freezing hand in front of his mouth and breathing warm air over his numb fingers, Suga got up and followed Daichi through the room to the stairwell. “The nights are getting colder,” he observed as they made their way downstairs. The metal and plastic of the flashlight was cold in his grip. 

“At least there’s some insulation in the building,” Daichi mused. “Heating will be a problem, though. We might just have to continually pile on blankets.” 

When they made their way onto the fourth floor, Suga let his flashlight beam drift over the sleeping forms of the other teammates, taking in the sight of them all peacefully asleep before turning it off when they reached their part of the room. 

However, instead of getting into his own futon, Suga silently slid under the sheets piled on Daichi’s futon, pressing straight up against him and revelling in their shared warmth and closeness. Sleep came easier than he expected. 

Was it worth it in order to be woken up the next morning by loud laughter and the yells of “Crow parents!”? Yes. 

* * *

“Making my way downtown, walking fast, fUCKING SPRINTING BECAUSE WE’RE BEING CHASED BY ZOMBIES!” 

* * *

They had raided this particular store a few times before. But there was a lot of stuff still piled on the shelves, more than they could carry, so they always had to leave some things behind, coming back now and then to bring more supplies back. What helped was that it was a big grocery store in close proximity to them. 

After prying the doors open with crowbars and closing them behind the team, they began to walk into the darkened interior of the store, the only illumination being the sunlight filtering in through the store’s windows and doors. 

“Does this give anyone that feeling you get in hotels? You know, standing alone in the cold, impersonal rooms with their stark lighting and overly clean floors...and you just exist, suspended in time and space?” Yachi asked as they began to branch out from each other, scanning the isles for any zombies that might have made their way inside the building. 

“Someone finally put that feeling into words!” exclaimed Noya as a general chorus of agreement sounded from the rest of the team. 

The raid was nothing special or overly dangerous. Each of them made their own way through the store, calling out to each other now and then about what they found. When the entire team gathered by the empty checkout counters to take stock of what each of them gathered, Tanaka broke off and moved to the side, where a bunch of empty shopping carts were cluttered together. 

“Wait - what are you doing-” Ennoshita began, but Tanaka had already taken a shopping cart and was running, pushing it down the empty shopping aisle, and then jumping on it and whooping as he rode its movement all the way down the aisle. 

“Come on, try it!” 

“Great idea, Ryuu!” Noya shouted, before running off to grab a shopping cart, hauling it forward and positioning it at the start of the aisle. 

“No, we should be getting back to base-” Ennoshita tried to say, but was cut off by the sound of Noya’s whoops as he started running, pushing the cart in front of him. 

Hinata turned to run after a cart, and when Kageyama yelled, “Idiot, where are you going?” and ran after him, Ennoshita knew he lost. 

Ah, well, if you can’t beat them, join them, right? 

It was entertaining, though. Even Yachi had fun surfing carts down the aisles of an empty grocery store. 

* * *

Their raids were slowly stretching further and further away from their base as they exhausted supply stores in shops closer to their base. Whereas they used to use smaller raid groups in groups of three or four, now they almost always went out in larger groups of six, meant for navigating long distances. And sometimes, they encountered zombies. Everyone knew how lucky they were to be uninfected. 

“There are so many of them,” gasped Asahi as they backed slowly away from the advancing wave of zombies. 

“We got what we needed, now we need to get back to base,” their captain called. 

Complying, their team ran down the zombie-infested streets, rushing past slower zombies who’s lunges at them missed, toppling to the side. Then, shouts of alarm rang through the air. Heads turned to spot two lone figures sprinting towards them, familiar. Two familiar figures that none of them had expected to see again. 

“Takeda-sensei! Coach Ukai!” 

Daichi seemed to be the first one to snap out of the shock. “Come on, follow us!” he shouted. 

The eight of them ran in a tight cluster through the streets, until their base loomed in front of them. They ran into the lobby, Daichi waiting at the entrance of the building to usher the rest of them inside. The stairwell door was opened from the inside, eyes filled with shock peering out at them, and only after everyone was inside did Daichi run in and slam the door closed with Suga’s help, shoving the barricades in place to hold the door closed. 

When they made their way onto the fourth floor, everyone had gathered around the returned raid group asking questions and demanding to know about what their coach and advisor had gone through and how they survived. After they had calmed down enough to let the two of them speak, they explained how they had wandered around the city after the outbreak reached their meeting point, and how they had been forced to flee. 

“We’re glad to have you back, Coach, Takeda-sensei,” Daichi said when they were finished. Knowing that it was possible they’d have to defer to their teachers’ orders, he moved to the side and allowed them to step forward to address the team, but Coach Ukai’s hand stopped him. 

“No, there’s no need for you to back down,” he said, resting a hand on Daichi’s shoulder. “Captain.” 

* * *

It wasn’t too big a surprise to everyone when Daichi and Suga continued to lead the team, with Coach and Takeda-sensei more or less taking a backseat in the leadership role, instead managing things from the back and letting the captains do most of the job. 

The two of them had their living quarters on the fifth floor, just above the common room. One evening, with everyone else distracted by a game of Truth or Dare in the common room, Daichi and Suga headed upstairs and asked them about their opinions on trying to head back to Miyagi. 

“It’ll be difficult, that’s for sure,” Takeda-sensei said. “But it might help us in the long run. Miyagi has farmland, which means we’ll have a more sustainable food source. If we had a working bus or car, it would help us a lot.” 

“So what all we need is a working vehicle, and we could make it,” Suga said. 

“Theoretically, yes. But we need to find a working vehicle first.” 

After a long discussion, the general consensus was that yes, they should try to return to Miyagi. 

“Hey, you two,” Coach Ukai called after them when Daichi and Suga got up to return to the common area on the fourth floor. “Don’t worry too much. There’s still a lot we haven’t covered or still need to deal with. And I’d say that you’ve all done a pretty good job of staying alive already.”

* * *

A crash resounded through the room as a volleyball smashed into the ceiling. 

“THIS IS WHY SUGA DOESN’T FUCKING LOVE YOU!” 

* * *

“The game is called Mafia. We need at least seven people playing, not including a gamemaster,” Tanaka said. “Anyone want to join?” 

“I’ll join!” Hinata called from across the room, moving to sit near the remains of their campfire, where Tanaka was. 

And of course, Kageyama also had to yell, “I’ll join too!”

“So will Tsukki and I!” Yamaguchi called. 

“Don’t involve me in this.” 

“But we need more people. Please, Tsukki?” 

“...fine.” 

“I’ll join,” Daichi offered. 

“Asahi and I will join!” called Noya. 

“Wh-why me?” 

“That’s seven,” Tanaka said as they gathered in a ring beside the campfire. “So, rules are: everyone lives in town together and will be given roles. The roles are: mafia, detective, doctor, and civilian. There are two mafia, one doctor, one detective, and everyone else is a civilian. Revealing your role is discouraged, because then you could be targeted by the mafia. The gamemaster chooses the roles. There are also night and day cycles. During the night cycle, everyone will be asleep, meaning you’ll have to put your heads down and not look. The mafia will choose someone to kill. The doctor will choose someone to save from the mafia. The detective will choose someone to inspect, which reveals the person’s role. During the day cycle, everyone will wake up to see who’s dead, and they’ll have to choose someone to hang. If you get killed by the mafia or hanged, you’re out. The game ends when either all the mafia are hanged or when everyone else is dead.” 

“Wait, this is confusing!” 

“Eh, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. Now, because I was the one who explained the rules, I’ll be gamemaster. Now, heads down because I need to choose roles.” 

One game ended up turning into two which ended up turning into three which ended up turning into several games lasting into the night. 

“No, I‘m just a civilian!”

“He’s the mafia! Hang him!” 

“We’ll vote on it. All in favor?” 

"...Alright, you're getting hanged. Any last words?" 

“What is going on here?” 

“Oh, nothing. We’re just playing a game.” 

“All of you, go to bed. It’s late. I spent a lot of time in the crow’s nest, lots more than usual. You should all be asleep right now.” 

“Mom, you’re no fun.” 

* * *

“You dumbass!” 

The stairwell door slammed shut behind them as the raid team finally made their way into their base, sprinting past the lobby and into the stairwell. Into safety. 

This raid had reached particularly far from their base, or their “nest”, as some of them had begun to call it. A zombie horde had caught up to them while they were trapped in another empty building, and getting out had been an ordeal. They were extremely lucky as to not have been bitten or scratched, coming out with only some bruises and sprains. The worst of all of them had been Hinata, who had managed to allow the rest of the team to escape. 

Now that they were in safety, Kageyama stopped and whipped around to yell at Hinata. “You absolute idiot! You could’ve been killed!” 

“Yeah, but I wasn’t!” 

“You dumbass! You’re an idiot! Why would you do that!?” 

“It allowed you to escape, didn’t it!?” 

“But you could’ve died!” 

Their yells echoed up and down the stairwell. Yachi, who had come down from the common area to greet the raid team, slowly backed away, quietly asking, “Uh, could someone break them up?” 

“I would never have let you do such a stupid thing! You’re stupid, reckless, and-” 

“But we’re okay now! Why are you so hung up on that!?” 

“Because I care about you, idiot!” 

Kageyama’s outburst silenced Hinata. They then stood there in silence, awkwardly peering at each other, before breaking out into argument once more. 

“You - I - what - did you mean -” 

“No, dumbass, obviously I didn’t mean it like that -”

“Boo! Get a room!” Noya yelled from the landing above them. 

* * *

Nights had a tendency to be quiet. Days, too, but in daylight, there was the sunlight streaming down from the sky and the sounds of movement echoing throughout the common room and the building. Nighttime was when the entire building was still, the inhabitants asleep. In the deep night, ther building was sure to look like any other abandoned building, still and dark with no light or movement in its windows. Well, crows’ black feathers were able to blend in with the night, so maybe it was fitting. 

The nights were getting colder and colder as the nights wore on. Hinata wrapped the blanket around him tighter from where he was sitting on an office chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, on the top floor of their base. Everyone else was probably asleep at the moment, but he was wide awake, having gone up to the crow’s nest after what felt like hours of tossing and turning, unable to go to sleep. He had no idea if it was even worth it, keeping watch with barely any light to see by. But it was probably better than doing nothing. It was peaceful up here, too. 

He jumped when the door to the room slammed open, and turned to see Kageyama walking in, carrying a small pile of blankets. 

“Hey, dumbass, what are you doing up here? You’re supposed to be asleep.” 

So much for it being peaceful. “But I can’t sleep,” Hinata replied. 

“And why not?” Kageyama dragged up a chair and sat down beside Hinata, depositing the blankets on another chair. 

“I don’t know. I just can’t, okay?” 

They sat then sat there in silence, peering out of the windows. “I heard Daichi and Suga talking with Coach and Takeda-sensei a couple weeks ago, when I was heading up to the crow's nest,” Kageyama finally said, breaking the silence. “They want to go back to Miyagi.” 

Miyagi. Where his parents and Natsu probably still were. “It makes sense. More supplies there, and less people,” Hinata mumbled, still staring straight out the window, not looking at Kageyama. He paused, debating on whether to share the thoughts swirling around in his head. A second later, he decided that he didn’t care. “Are all of us going to make it? And if we do, will we stay together?” 

After a brief pause, Kageyama reached over and punched his shoulder lightly. “Of course, dumbass. We’re a team.” 

Turning to look at him, Hinata muttered, “We look out for each other.” 

“Damn right." Kageyama threw another blanket over him, and pulled one over himself. "Don't get cold. You won't be of any use sick," he muttered gruffly, settling into a more comfortable position on his chair. 

"I won't," Hinata said. "You're not going back downstairs?"

"No." 

"Why?" 

"...Because I can't sleep either." 

Without anything else to say, both of them were, for once, quiet. The last thing Hinata could remember was sitting there in silence with Kageyama, surrounded by darkness, before waking up the next morning to noise with an ache in his back and the blankets still wrapped loosely around him, Kageyama asleep in the chair beside him, morning sunlight streaming down on them. 

When he turned to see what had woken him, he saw Noya standing by the open door. 

"This isn't exactly what I imagined when I said 'get a room', but close enough," Noya said. 

* * *

The crows’ nest was their home. Yachi was the one who named it, the same way that she was the one who named their lookout post the crow’s nest. Somehow, during the months that they stayed in that abandoned office building, it turned from their base to their home. Of course, they would one day need to leave that building in search of a more permanent place to leave. 

But the crows’ nest would move with them, because they were family, and home was wherever they were.

**Author's Note:**

> for some reason, most of my works end up getting sappy at one point or another. i hope that's not too big an issue here


End file.
